VOXOX Blog

Sparking romance with VoIP

Voice over IP? Romantic? With the right person, anything can be romantic — especially VoIP. All you need is some imagination, a smartphone and Voxox. Oh, and this blog post.

At my high school there was a club for everything — chess club, photography club, debate club, surf club, drama club, magic club, knitting club, bicycle club, ukulele club — you name it, we had it. There was even a “Club Club” started by a friend of mine with an overdeveloped sense of mischief. If you were so inclined, you could sign up for any number of them or start a new one of your own, like my friend did — although maybe not quite so cheeky.

Poor Thanksgiving — dissed again this year by over-zealous retailers putting sparkly red bows on flat-screen TVs and earnest bakery cafés who just love decking the halls. This year I saw Christmas decorations showing up in August. August!! Whatever happened to Labor Day and Halloween, let alone Thanksgiving!? Are we expected simply to skate over these long-treasured holidays, straight over Thanksgiving and land in the heart of the holiday shopping season? Are we to forget the time-honored traditions of hand turkeys, food fights, and turducken altogether?

The worldwide mobile landscape is in a state of constant change. Even as I was researching this post, mobile usage stats have increased, leaving me with no alternative but to qualify all data herein with “as of this writing.”

Despite the constant flux (or maybe because of it), the numbers for mobile usage in China are fascinating, especially when compared to the same statistics in the U.S. We Americans tend to think of ourselves as technically competent people (whether it’s true or not) but some of these stats may surprise you.

When I was a kid I hated sharing. I was always happy sharing the other kids’ toys, dolls or games, but when it came to my stuff — forget about it! Where this attitude came from is anybody’s guess. My family was always generous. My friends were quick to offer anything. But when I was called upon to share, I suddenly “heard my mother calling,” gathered up my things and took off. What a brat, right?

It’s somewhat unsettling. As Baby-Boomers reach retirement age and Generation X’ers are starting families and settling down, Millennials — babies who were born what seems like yesterday — have reached adulthood. This means they are about to take over the world!

It’s generally agreed that Millennials are people born beginning in 1982 and reaching adulthood around the year 2000. Those of us Gen-X’ers and Boomers may recall it was around this time that the Internet came into common use.

Family Values

Face it. Summer is ending. Autumn is approaching. Everyone seems to be OK with this (what choice do we have?) but close on the heels of autumn come the holidays. Sorry to be the one to break it to you but someone had to do it. We only have a few short weeks before the chaos begins. Every year I’m surprised over how quick retailers are to start their promotions. Last week I got an email from Pier One announcing their 2015 Christmas collections.

Free texts and calls using VoIP

So you’re finally ready to get free texting and calling with Voice over IP! Smart move. And you’ve decided to use Voxox. Even smarter move. Consumers have begun using VoIP to save money on local and long distance calls and avoid data charges. Because VoIP apps run over the top (or OTT) of your current cellular service, you can minimize your monthly plan and use Voxox for unlimited free texting and calling in-network.

At the end of the month, I leave for a two-week vacation in Italy. It’s exciting, despite the crazy amount of planning that goes into a trip of this magnitude. I bought a Fodor’s Guide to Italy that’s — no joke — 985 pages! There are myriad decisions to be made, from the critically important, “Where are we going to stay?” to the most mundane, “What socks should I bring?”

Wait … Who invented the telephone?

It’s always a little bit disconcerting when you find out things aren’t what you thought they were. Classic example: Pluto. Growing up, we were taught that Pluto was the ninth planet, discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. I wonder how Clyde would have felt about its downgrading to planetoid in 1992? Suddenly Pluto is no longer a planet? Appalling. Years later, tomatoes were called into question. Fruit or vegetable? When I was told that a hare isn’t a rabbit, well, that’s when I lost it. There’s a vague feeling of betrayal that comes with these revelations. I was taught this stuff in school, and now it’s wrong?